


Merry

by caitfair24



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anxiety, Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18854449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caitfair24/pseuds/caitfair24
Summary: Two interactions in a bar, a year apart.





	Merry

**Author's Note:**

> My submission for day 16 of @itsbuckysworld's Hello Spring Writing Challenge. The prompt was "last December."

Winter arrived that year with a delayed kind of forcefulness, a rude apology for being late. But he didn’t mind. 

The years came back to him, this time of year. History surged and spun old songs, nostalgia outweighing the modern need for new, new, new. In the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg, he found a memory of his mother; in the plaintive notes of “White Christmas,” he heard his sisters.

It was a sketch of himself, that he found, amidst bright tinsel and old world charm. A sketch of himself at twenty-two, at fourteen, at seven -- time compressed, so that he was everything at once, in December. 

A storm threatened, but still he and Steve had come out, looking for something warmer than the ever-sophisticated holiday cocktail party at the Tower. Stiff suits were confining; the music too soulless. Instead, there was this: the yeasty scent of draught ales and beer rising, sweet as new bread; a thrumming, merry undercurrent of Christmas songs and carols; laughter and joking and cheap, overly-shiny decorations. Red and green, cartoon snowmen and paper Santa Clauses taped along the edge of a fine mahogany bar. 

The bartender was wearing elf ears. 

And it made Bucky smile. 

He took another sip of the beer that would never get him drunk, not even were he to lay directly under the tap and drink his weight in the stuff. But it was nice to nurse one, to have his flesh hand curled around the smooth contours of a glass bottle, indulging not so much in the promise of faint inebriation, but in a memory. A memory of doing just this, in faraway pubs. Places long closed. 

He felt like a place long closed, on days like these. He watched men who looked a little like him -- early thirties, dark-haired, bearded, clad in much the same clothing, as though they all shared a communal closet -- and he wondered what their lives were like. Did they wake in the middle of the night with a pounding, shattered heart? Did they lose themselves in the labyrinth of their own minds, spend moonlit hours pacing the corridors of something so dark within themselves, they might never find their way home? 

Or was life always this? Paper decorations, dim lighting, a smoky bar and the kind of strange, shared holiday spirit so easily born at this time of year? 

Was it a flutter in their stomachs, at the sight of a pretty girl at the bar? She had a drink in her hand, and a well-meaning smile on her lips as she thanked the bartender and handed over a few bills. When she turned to approach the booth just two rows over from where he and Steve sat, he hunched over, fighting a grin at the rather nauseated-looking reindeer stitched on the front of her thick, oversized green sweater. Dangling silver earrings ended in bright, old-fashioned Christmas lights; she’d put some sort of glittery makeup around her eyes. 

Bucky swallowed. 

It was an old-world feeling surging inside of him. An instinct to catch her eye, to smile. To call her something sweet, ask about her day. Buy her a drink. 

Learn her name. Listen to her story. 

But it belonged to a different man, didn’t it? That sketch of himself appeared again, twenty-six years traced in charcoal and laughter -- cut off in the snow. Frozen before a long, aching lifetime of unnamed pain. Pain he could _feel_ , the aftershocks of horror -- but not pain he could grasp. No matter how hard he scraped at the past, he came away only with bloody fingernails and poisonous shavings of acts he could not recall. 

The pain stayed. Always. 

Recovery had taught him many things, and letting go was one of them. In contrast, another lesson was reaching. The importance of looking for something. A new hobby; a routine; friends; hope; a future. Walking helped. Running even more. A grey rescue cat that curled about his ankles and reminded him, quite noisily, of feeding times. Urging him from his bed in the morning. 

Work helped, too. 

But the young man was still there, in small ways, and he reached, too. For elements of healing that Bucky’s therapist sometimes skated over, wary of probing too deeply. Too sharply. That young man wanted to flirt, to earn a blush in this crowded space, to have a pretty, funny woman laugh at _him_  and him alone. 

That young man wanted to choose and be chosen in return. Not for anything more than the price of whatever it was she was drinking. 

He tugged the baseball cap down a little further over his eyes, tipping the bottle back up to his lips as Steve checked his phone. “Another hour okay with you, pal?”

“Hmm?” Bucky tore his furtive gaze away from the girl, momentarily distracted by the way those damn earrings caught the light. “What’s that?”

A grin unfurled on Steve’s face, as he glanced over at the busy, rounded booth. Eight or so women were gathered around, all dressed in ridiculously-festive sweaters and accessories. Tipsy laughter bubbled up, cutting through an easy rendition of “Silver Bells.”  Bucky watched as the girl from the bar raised her glass and started some kind of toast, punctuated with giggles and -- this shocked him -- a glance in his direction. 

A glance that sent a rush of heat to his face, made the bottle slippery in his grip.  He shot his gaze back down to his lap, rolled his shoulders forward again -- missing the way the girl’s expression faltered, even as she finished the toast. Steve, though -- Steve saw. 

“Let’s buy them drinks,” he said firmly, tugging Bucky by the elbow. “Christmas gift.” 

“Wh-what?” 

Time moved faster in the panic: Bucky observed with red-faced detachment while Steve leaned over the bar, ordering two pitchers and a tray of eight glasses to be sent over to the “super Christmas table.” The bartender didn’t seem to recognize Steve in all the festive frenzy. “We can take them over, no problem,” he said, when the order had come through. 

Bucky chanced a quick look back at the table. The women were now admiring some flashing lights one had geared up on the reindeer antlers she wore; the pretty girl was sitting stiffly, hands playing idly with the phone in her lap. His stomach clenched; the young man chastised him. 

In the winter of 1942, Bucky would’ve strolled right up to this girl. _He_  would’ve suggested buying drinks, enough for the whole table, so no lady felt left out. But he would make it very clear that it was her he was interested in. 

Instead, he did an awkward half-shuffle up to the bar, reaching for the second pitcher just as Steve plucked a single glass from the tray and set it down on the bar. “Which girl?” he asked, making a show of rearranging a small stack of coasters. 

The world had flipped. 

Turned completely on its head. 

Steve Rogers was going to help Bucky Barnes pick up a _dame_. 

In the twenty-first century. 

“Reindeer sweater?” Bucky nodded, mouth suddenly gone dry, dry as a desert. And his hands felt odd -- his legs were like jelly. He tugged awkwardly at the sleeve of his bomber jacket, hoping he didn’t look like an idiot with the one black glove covering his metal hand. “Okay,” Steve continued. “I’m going to go over, wish them a Merry Christmas, and then hand out the glasses -- that’ll give you a chance to hand hers” -- he gestured to the one Bucky was in clear danger of accidentally shattering -- “directly to her. Smile, Buck. You don’t want to scare the girl.” 

He meant to be kind, Bucky knew. But in that simple, lighthearted jibe, Steve unknowingly held the crux of the fear now brewing in Bucky’s stomach. What if he _did_  scare her? Smiles didn’t come as easy to him now as they had in the forties; he sometimes stumbled over his words. In his mind, he could be clear enough to admire her eyes or the sound of her laugh, but expressing that? 

Words caught in his throat. Trapped against the dam of the resolute, painful silence he’d endured for so many years. What softness he did possess in his life now was fiercely guarded, and the irony of that did not escape him. If this action -- buying a pretty girl a drink and asking her the questions he wanted to unlock -- was to earn him even an ounce of softness on this snowy evening, Bucky knew his mind would play with him a little. 

He’d dream of her tonight regardless, but not in the way men tend to dream of kind, beautiful women. No, she’d star in his nightmares -- pretty face contorted in a pain he couldn’t save her from. 

A swell of newcomers entered the bar, bringing with them a sweeping icy chill and an updated report that visibility outside was poor and the temperature was, quote, “ _disgusting_.” Bucky’s muscles tightened as a man elbowed his way past him to the bar, trying to quell that sickly surge of instinct, the instinct to engage. 

What would his therapist say? 

_Focus. What can you see?_

Her. Shyly looking up at Steve, wonderment clear on her face. She knew _exactly_ who he was, baseball cap or no. 

_What can you hear?_

Music and memory, tangled on the air. “ _In the lane, snow is glistenin’, A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight...”_

_What can you smell?_

Beer. Stale cigarette smoke. The hopeful efforts of a cinnamon air freshener and, as he approached the table, a multifaceted bouquet of mixed perfumes. 

_What can you feel?_

The smooth glide of the glass under his fingers; a spark as his skin met hers in the exchange. The heat of her smile, the electric pleasure of her focus on _him_. 

_What can you taste?_

Old fear. New hope. 

* * *

Her name fit perfectly in Bucky’s mouth, as though it was always meant to be there. He said it several times, relishing the poetry of it against the harsher contours of words he said in the past. 

Steve apologetically made it clear to her friends that he hadn’t intended to hijack their evening, but no one seemed to mind. It was a friendly Christmas party, an excuse for babysitters and ugly sweaters and a silly indulgence in some holiday karaoke at a bar eight blocks away. “We lost,” Y/n giggled to Bucky. “Like, big time. I forgot the words to ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.’ My grandmother would kill me if she knew.” 

He had another beer; she started sipping water. Tossing memories and stories onto the air, heavy as it was with conviviality, with anticipation. Two hours in, Bucky felt comfortable enough to tease her about the sweater; she shot back with an accusation of him hiding an equally-lurid one under his black jacket. 

His name fit well in her mouth, too. By midnight, he found himself addicted to the way it slipped from between her lips, the way it seemed to be imbued with something he hadn’t heard in far too long. A sweetness, faint longing. A subtle yielding to headier thoughts. 

Bucky was dizzy by one. Doll-dizzy, and she was the pretty cause. Smart and witty -- she’d kindled a flame in his veins, and it seared him from the inside out. She pressed her number into his phone, and his name against his skin. The soft skin of his neck, untouched and yearning. 

Amidst the fading notes of a Christmas song born while he’d been asleep -- Bucky fell in love with her retreating glance, with the twinkle of those earrings. The fever in her gaze. The want; the choice. 

* * *

Moments swelled and crested, buoying him and drowning him by turns, but Bucky persevered. It was all he could do. Feed the cat, go for a run, eat an enormous breakfast -- text _her_. Call _her_. Meet _her_. 

He guarded the softness of this new love, guarded it fiercely. Protected her from prying eyes, from the enemies he imagined in every corner of the coffee shop, the pizzeria, the bookstore. Of course, his name had been cleared, but suspicion dies hard, and the three names she branded him with -- _Bucky_ , _baby_ , _James_ \-- were sometimes too gentle to block the blows of _Winter Soldier_. 

_Assassin._

_Soldat._

The spring saw him, appropriately, twitterpated. A lifetime ago, a young man had whispered that into the ear of a girl now long gone, a joke from that new cartoon that had just come out. 

Now, Y/n traded it in whispers on the couch, snuggled up with the cat on her lap and her head on _his_  lap. “Don’t fall for a skunk, baby,” she laughed. 

And he laughed, too. Laughed because he could. 

Until the nightmares came back. He woke in a cold sweat every night that April. Clawed his way back to himself in the shy dawn light, under Steve’s careful guidance. Under her soft love. 

That summer, he took her to the park, to a beach -- all with his arm gleaming under the sun and her hand wrapped in his, a balm and a benediction wrapped in the braid of their fingers, metal and flesh. 

When the year turned again, rounding a colder corner in the fall, Y/n met him by moonlight for the first time -- and he understood then why so many choose to love at night. The story he mapped against her skin, and she against his -- that was too much for daylight. Better to make those rhymes -- the ways they met so neatly -- by a gentler light, light that streamed and stroked, rather than blazed. There was heat enough between _them_. 

Bucky felt himself sinking. Not into despair, but into a warm bath, every day he was with her. She wore compassion like a fine perfume, and he woke with it clinging to his flesh, right down to his bones. Therapy was different now, with her hand in his, as she mined for strategies and coping mechanisms and ways to help him. 

He was not a project, she assured him. He was her privilege. 

A pretty girl in a silly sweater, leaning against the bar. 

Sometimes Bucky couldn’t figure it out -- had he found her, or had she found him? 

* * *

She liked cider. And he liked her, so Bucky found himself carefully wrapping his hands around two squat, brown bottles that night, navigating his way back to the small table at the back Y/n had chosen as soon as they’d walked in -- by virtue of a wide-eyed paper reindeer keeping careful watch on the wall just above it. 

“It’s a sign,” she repeated cheerily, taking a sip of her drink. “I think he needs a name.” 

Nerves made her silly, Bucky had learned that a long time ago, when she’d opened their first joint therapy session with a dumb joke -- the memory of which still woke her up in the night. And which _still_  made him laugh. 

“ _So,”_  she’d said tersely, fingers dancing in her lap.  _“Come here often?”_

But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what she had to be nervous about tonight. 

A quiet drink. Mid-December snow squall outside. It’s an evening they’ve repeated often since first meeting, nearly a year before. Bucky found they worked best against a softer backdrop -- muffled music and cushioned benches; the plush planes of her couch and his bed. She lit candles for him; he slipped sweet, old-fashioned nothings into her veins, a finer liquor than she’d ever had before. 

“You okay, doll?” he asked, taking a swig of his own cider. It really wasn’t half-bad, he thought idly, examining the label. Idly, he tapped his toes to “Jingle Bell Rock” and stretched one hand across the expanse of the table, reaching for her.

Shaking her head, Y/n dug for her purse, abandoned somewhere on the sticky floor.  “I, um...just a sec....” Fingers trembling, eyes a little heavy, and anxiety rocketed through him. _Bad thing? Bad thing?_

A breakup was his daily fear. Y/n’s sudden realization that she was dating a centenarian, a former assassin. A man with blood on his hands and permanent bewilderment etched in his expression, as he struggled to come to terms with the marvel of his own continued existence. 

God, she deserved better. She deserved so much more. 

And if she wanted to go, he would help her pack. Help her slip from his life as sweetly as she had come into it -- because he loved her. 

Oh, damn. 

 _He loved her_. 

She held his heart in the palm of her tender hand, nestled as snugly and wholly as the slim box she reached out to him now. Silver paper, patterned with snowmen; a tiny candy-cane tucked into the bow. Bucky knew a flash of guilt; he’d had yet to actually make it to a store, though he had a running text conversation going with one of her close friends, who’d promised to help him find the perfect Christmas gift. 

He had thought he still had a week. 

“Oh.” 

Y/n stood, leaning over to press a kiss to his lips. “Merry Christmas, baby,” she said softly. 

The paper yielded easily; his composure less so. Bucky smiled at the candy-cane, taking a second to unwrap the plastic and have a quick taste -- a momentary distraction from the journey that earned him a giggle and a kick to the shins. “Hurry up,” Y/n urged. “Come on.” 

A flash of dull bronze; a jagged edge that cut him to the quick. He inhaled sharply, caught between breaths. 

Complications burst in his mind as Bucky stared down at the little key in the palm of his hand. Security risks; upgrades to her locks and windows. Everyone would need to be notified; maybe he could look into some surveillance, just the entrances and exits. One or two nights a week for him alone wasn’t a bad thing, but if he was going to be living there full-time...

Oh, damn. 

 _He loved her_. He _wanted_  this. He wanted a pillow in her bed and a toothbrush next to hers. He wanted sleepy mornings under that ugly abstract painting -- a melding of purples and golds that she’d paid sixty dollars for, much to his chagrin. He wanted coffee kisses and fights about ironing and late night trips to the grocery store. 

The honeyed promise of that kind of domesticity had been his craving for  _decades_ now. 

And she’d wrapped it up in a bow. 

Bucky’s watery gaze slid up to meet hers -- and he froze at her stricken face. Eyes filled with tears, bottom lip trembling, hands skimming over the surface of the table to retrieve the gift. “I’m sorry,” she whispered jerkily. “I’m sorry; it’s too soon; you don’t have to -- I mean, I don’t --” 

_Focus. What can you see?_

A rainbow of Christmas lights framing her profile. 

_What can you hear?_

Tinny, faint carols, too new for him to name; a hitch to her breathing as his hand engulfs hers. 

_What can you smell?_

Perfume and cider, golden apples on the air between them. 

_What can you feel?_

The glide of lipstick under his kiss, under his acceptance, under his gratitude; the yielding of her relief; the relinquishing of her tears. 

_What can you taste?_

Joy. 


End file.
